Today in The Hague, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Dutch promotional bank Nederlandse Waterschapsbank N.V. (NWB Bank) have signed a loan agreement worth EUR 400 million.

The loan follows a cooperation agreement that both parties signed late last year, in which they pledged to exchange information and experience for the purpose of better supporting public projects in the Netherlands. Now, the EIB makes EUR 400 million available to NWB Bank, who will invest the funds in projects across sectors as social housing, environment, knowledge economy and water, all developed by local governments.

“NWB Bank is always looking for opportunities to maximise her availability in financing customers in the Dutch public sector at the best possible conditions. Through the EIB loan, NWB Bank can now also offer the benefits of cheap EIB financing to smaller projects and customers that would otherwise not be eligible for such financing.” said Frenk van der Vliet, board member of NWB Bank.

The EIB is making this credit facility available to NWB Bank so that they can on-lend to the public sector at the best possible conditions. As a consequence, local governments would spend less on interest payments and this should contribute towards making social housing, as well as projects of the water boards, more affordable. Through this cooperation with NWB Bank some EUR 800 million worth of projects should be able to receive financing, since the EIB can’t finance more than 50% of any investment.

Vice-President Pim van Ballekom of the EIB said: “Although we can bring a lot of financial and technical expertise to a project, at certain levels the EIB simply lacks the manpower and specific market knowledge to be of benefit to the market by itself. I think that the fruitful collaboration that we started with NWB Bank last year, will now start to show results in the form of concrete support for projects that will benefit Dutch citizens.”